U.S Open Tennis Championship Controversy

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During the U.S Open Women’s Final, Serena Williams was competing against Naomi Osaka for what would have been her 24th Grand Slam title. In this heated match, Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was caught coaching her from curtsied, in which hand gestures were seen being given, thus concluded by the the Chair Umpire Carlos Ramos as coaching. In tennis, coaching from the courtside is prohibited even if the player does not see the signals being given and is considered to be any communication or advice given to a player during the match from someone on the courtside.

This violation of the coaching rule led to Williams getting a coaching violation. Williams replyed to Chair Umpire Ramos’s warning with a fierce statement that she would rather lose than cheat. In her frustration, Williams lost the next game and slammed her racket, breaking it. She was then docked a point for this second violation.

Serena continued arguing with Ramos during the change of ends. She called Ramos a “thief ” for taking the point from her. This dispute then lead to Serena receiving her third violation for her alleged “verbal abuse” to Ramos. The Umpire docked Serena a whole game placing Osaka in the lead of 5-3.

Osaka took the title of 2018 US Open Women Singles victor with a final score of 6-2 6-4. Following this, Williams fought for her position by claiming that she was fighting for equal treatment of women. She stated that when her male counterparts have issues on court they are not punished as harshly as women are.

Later, Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, admitted to giving hand gestures to Williams during the match, but also implied Osaka’s coach was doing the same and that other coaches coached all the time.

“I am honest. I was coaching. I don’t think she looked one time. Sascha was coaching every point too,” he said.

Serena was astonished by Mouratoglou’s claim and stated that it wasn’t possible for him to coach her since they don’t have any specific hand gestures.

“So you said you made a motion, now you told people that you’re coaching me. That doesn’t make sense, why would you say that?”- Williams

After two weeks of controversy, Serena was fined $17,000 for her violations, but she is eager to move on from the situation and continue playing. She also hopes she didn’t ruin Osaka’s astonishing win because the majority of the crowd was booing at the results of the match.